


We are Nowhere and It's Now

by sapphoslover



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Arthur comes back, But with a happy ending i promise, M/M, Merthurkissfest2019, Reincarnation, a bit of self hatred, feelings of insecurity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:54:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22372918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphoslover/pseuds/sapphoslover
Summary: The waiting, and what comes after.
Relationships: Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 117
Collections: The Merlin/Arthur Kiss Fest 2019





	We are Nowhere and It's Now

**Author's Note:**

> For the Merthurkissfest 2019!
> 
> Many many many thanks to the wonderful @multifacetedfangirl for all her help with my fic, and for putting up with me. Couldn't have done this without your kindness and support.

At one point he stopped counting the days consciously. Which is not to say that if he was asked, he would be unable to tell the exact number of days, months and years it had been since Arthur had died. It wasn’t something he’d forgotten, or something he’d ever forget. Sometimes he thought that the days had imprinted themselves on the inside of his wrist just above his pulse as a horribly unwelcome reminder that he was  _ alive alive alive _ without Arthur — every second his heart beat was one more second he was here without Arthur.

Winters were the most painful.

Even with the wonderful and terrifying inventions of the 21st century, there was still nothing that could make lessen the horrendous ache just above his ribcage every time it snowed and he thought of everyone he loved who was dead. 

Sometimes, the hollowness was welcome. Other times, it hurt worse than feeling the magic bleed from his bones, the sheer ache of it making him collapse onto himself. It wasn’t physical, it was the twisted irony of it all that had made something bitter wake inside of him. All the times he’d wished to be rid of his magic just so that Arthur would never find out and now, centuries later, when his magic had been the only thing to remind him that he was  _ real _ , that what he had loved, what he had done to save the ones he’d loved had been real, it was taken away from him. Quicker than a lightning strike, gentler than the embers of a fire dying —  _ slowly, slowly, slow _ .

It had been a few years now, or maybe more, since he had stopped feeling the magic breathe just under his skin. Since then, the ache for Arthur, the missing had grown so much that he would find himself in tears at the strangest of moments. He supposed it was to be expected. He had never thought that he would have to live without either of those things, especially not once he’d gotten them.

There were days when he could feel nothing but the sharp pain tingling throughout his body making visions of his unbearably long life swirl around his mind like the blood spilt in wars, like the ground breaking underneath the weight of it all. On these days, when it felt like pain was the only thing he’d ever feel, he missed his mother. He missed his mother fiercely. He wished he’d gotten to see her before she’d died. He missed her comfort, her arms, he missed being held by her, wished he could bury his face in her shoulder and just breathe. She had always smelled just a little bit like hope, however dwindling. He couldn’t find much of it anymore. 

___

A week before the New year’s eve, as they now called it, Merlin woke up to snow falling outside his window,  _ frozen tears of the Gods,  _ his mother used to whisper to him at night, when he couldn’t fall asleep because the snow used to scare him.

The eerie steadiness, the bleakness of it all — of something falling in perpetual silence yet taking so much space. Merlin had learnt that if he was more silent, he would appear smaller and if you were smaller, you could hide easily. Hiding was something he never quite learnt to do but something his mother had tried to teach. But snow, snow took up so much space and it was loved so so widely.

When he was 14, there was a day when the sky was as grey as the wool his mother used to knit him and Will a sweater. The snow had kept on falling, stubborn like a heart-ache. He’d been walking with Will, red faced and still slightly unaware of the pain they would be dealt with. Will had kissed him for the first time under a wilted tree, while caressing his face with hands that smelled like snow and lips that tasted like snow. It was the best thing Merlin had ever felt.

A few years later, Merlin had stood at the top of Camelot with Arthur: warm and tall and  _ lovely  _ at his side and they had watched the snow drape over the castle and her people like a never ending blanket, like something permanent and true, like something that would exist even after it had died. 

Flakes of snow had been on Arthur’s face, his cheeks, his eyelashes, his eyes bluer, brighter than any ocean, than anything alive or dead could ever have the right to be. Merlin had been so close. Arthur had rested his hand on top of Merlin’s for a moment there — perhaps in gratitude, or solace, or comfort. Merlin hadn’t known. He had hoped that perhaps one day, Arthur could love him and he would be allowed to taste the snow on Arthur’s lips, to drown alive in the blue of Arthur’s life eyes, as close to safe, as close to free he’d ever be. He had imagined that it would feel like salvation. He never did find out. 

In 1970, Merlin listened to  _ Pale Blue Eyes  _ by the Velvet Underground and cried after more than a century.

Now, he watches the snow outside his room, feels the softness of his quilt on his hands and feels the steady, ever present ache in his chest spread all over, the sheer missing of it so so so loud, so insistent in its urgency to be felt, to be experienced, to never be forgotten despite the fact that now, Arthur’s eyes felt like a dream he was far too lucky to ever relive. 

But there was something in the gentleness of the snow that made him ache, made him miss in a way so sweet and horrifying, made him wish to tear his heart out only to find out that it would still hurt. Sometimes, he wondered if Arthur really wouldn’t come back and all he’d be left with would be this terrible pain in his ribcage that felt more like home than anything had in a very long time and  _ that  _ terrified him to the core of his rotten wood of a heart.

But, as Merlin has seen throughout the countless rampages, the bloodshed, the two wars — the world keeps moving. It has no sympathy. Perhaps that is best — to keep the precarious balance of things, if nothing else. 

He gets out of his bed, dragging his feet like lead across the floor. Heaviness is a funny thing. It starts from one part of your body and spreads faster than wind. Or maybe, Merlin’s just deeply unhappy, has been, since a very long time.

He makes himself tea just the way Arthur used to like it, not at all surprised that he still remembers. Even if Gwen’s face has started to blur around the edges if he tries to retrieve it from under the broken shards of his mind, Arthur’s face is as clear, as brave, as  _ golden  _ as it had been the first day Merlin had seen him. He remembers everything about Arthur, the feel of his armour under his fingers — strong and steady not unlike Arthur’s hands. 

Sometimes he remembers so much, so vividly he worries that all these memories might leak out his body like the blood he wished he’d spilt alongside Arthur.

___

He spends the rest of his day in a melancholy haze, something not uncommon during these months. The world keeps spinning, cold and grey and largely bleak, yet still somehow hesitant in its hopefulness, in the way it  _ wants, aches, yearns  _ for something. Everyone does, Merlin supposes, yearn and ache for something tender during these months. Because tenderness often comes around in such times. This is partly why winters are harder — he’s been waiting for tenderness for so very long, every winter. 

The loneliness is so unsettling that he decides to go out. He ends up at a bar near his flat. The evening sets in and people enter. 

He has never been much for alcohol or mead, like Gwaine or even Elyan on particular days. But he resorts to it sometimes. It is not a solution, he knows. But his drink is colourful and pretty and he has always liked pretty things. 

It seems like a good enough way to handle himself. Instead of the growing weeds of sadness, of hurt, of anger, he can replace them with the tangibility of alcohol — something he can touch and taste unlike the pain of losing Arthur burning from the inside like the embers of a fire close to dying but that never ever dies. 

It’s not just the loss of Arthur that stings. He remembers everything he had done for Arthur, to protect him. Yet, he’d failed in the end. Not that any of it matters now. Some people, he believes aren’t meant for happiness. He is one of them. That is the only explanation. 

He twirls the drink in his glass and doesn’t, at first, notice the woman who sits down next to him. She asks the bartender for something and her voice sounds somehow familiar that his head lifts up to look at her. She is breathtakingly beautiful. There is no other way he can put it, no other similes, no other metaphors that he can find. She is beautiful. Her skin is brown and her red dress stands wonderfully against it — like kindness borne not out of desperation but goodness, like kindness that persists. 

“I know your face.” She says. Her voice sounds like music that must have heard so very long ago. Something that resides in the centre of his bones but doesn’t come to the surface.

He finds himself swallowing. 

“I don’t know where you would have seen it.” He says.

“I know you.” She says again, slightly leaning towards him, eyes sharp and bright — like moonlight upon the blue of the sea. 

“Where from?”

She takes a deep breath in, hands clutching her glass. 

“You’re Emrys.” Her voice is barely a whisper, barely a breath and yet the words echo around him as if it had been thrown at him from a cliff, as if everything he and ever loved and lost and wished he could have loved have found this exact second to pounce on him, rot ravage whatever is left of his body, his soul.

He does not breathe for a second, two. She leans closer, hands trembling where they’re clutching her glass. The red of her lips reminds Merlin of the colours of Camelot — bold and proud even in despair, especially in despair.

“You are.” She repeats, disbelief evident in her voice, her stance, “aren’t you? Please, tell me. Are you him? Emrys? or Merlin — I am afraid I do not know what you call yourself.”

He licks his lips. He is dimly aware that this might be an illusion. After all he is drunker than he has ever been and he does not believe that fate or luck or destiny have forgiven him enough for all of his sins to offer this moment of respite from the desolation that has been his home for centuries. 

But her eyes are so incredibly sharp and somehow warm beneath it all and her lips are red and red always reminds him of home, of Camelot, of Arthur, of  _ hope  _ that he does not realise when his own hands begin to shake from the sheer  _ feeling  _ of it all, from the realisation that perhaps the mirage he had been seeking out was real, that the light at the end of the tunnel is just that: light, bright light that stays. He does not know when or how he says  _ yes, yes I am or I suppose I was. I must have been because I don’t think I could have handled all this pain had it not been real  _ and she laughs, wet and delighted and poignant and takes his hands in her own. It is a grounding. 

She starts talking first, after they have both cried silent tears and untangled their hands from each other.

“I was raised with the Druids. Not since the beginning, no. But. I won’t go into that. Some events happened and I somehow came upon the Druids who took me in.” She recalls in a gentle voice. Merlin swears he can feel her nostalgia inside his heart as if it were her own.

“Did you learn magic or were you born with it?” He asks because it still gnaws at him sometimes, like a stubborn cold — that maybe he  _ was  _ a monster, to have deserved this. 

She smiles — a bitter, wry, twisted thing that reminds him so much of Morgana he worries he will start crying again.

“Born with it. I had visions, dreams. Not always accurate enough to be relied upon. So I was never deemed a Seer but I could heal.” She looks at her hands, as if willing her powers back, “They said I was good at it.”

“Did you ever visit Camelot?”

“Once. I saw you there. With the Crown Prince. You looked like you fit. Both of you. With each other.”

He swallows the pang those words cause, the familiar tugging at his chest that never quite went away since the second he’d seen Arthur. He forces the words out through the dryness of his throat, “I loved him. I do. Love him. And I, I failed to protect him.” 

She hums, low in her throat, “I doubt it was due to lack of trying.”

“It still hurts.”

“It’s supposed to.” 

He looks up at her, then, almost taken aback by the ferocity of belief her words seem to have, “Did you — Are you waiting for someone?”

“I’m not quite sure, Merlin. There were people, or rather, a person I loved, I’m sure. I still do. Love her, very much. But I am unaware if I’ll ever see her again.”

“What was her name?”

Her eyes twinkle, just a bit, and her mouth tilts up on one side, mischievous and melancholy, “That’s private.”

He laughs, he doesn’t quite know how long it’s been since he laughed. His body aches with it — unfamiliar but still known, “what’s yours? You still haven’t told me.”

She seems to ponder over it, for a minute, then says, “Noor-jahan.”

Merlin rolls it over on his tongue, concludes that her name sounds decadent enough that it could be one of the jewels on Morgana’s neck, before. Or maybe now, after, again. If she comes back. 

“It’s beautiful.” That is all he says.

“Do you wish him to come back?”

Merlin laughs again, at the absurdity that he has wished for anything else all this time, that his brokenness craves anything but the presence of Arthur among the crevices. 

“I don’t think I’ve wished for anything else.”

“Do you think he will come back?”

He looks away for a second, afraid that she might see too much into him, too much into his fear that he’s waiting for nothing, that he’ll keep waiting for something that will never happen. For how long he’ll wait, he does not know. 

But her eyes are kind and her hands feel so very real where they rest upon his own — a gesture of tenderness, solidarity perhaps. It is something he hasn’t received in so very long that he cannot find it in himself to be anything but honest, something that comes new to him. 

“I don’t know,” he begins, “he should have. Shouldn’t he? I was told that when Albion needs him again, he will. That he’s the once and future king but Albion has needed him, so desperately. And he’s not here. Sometimes I think i just missed him, that I was so taken by my own bloody despair that I missed him completely. And that — that hurts. More than I can bear.” 

“He was married, wasn’t he?” Says she, softly, as if telling a child that his mother is no longer alive. 

Merlin nods, he remembers how beautiful Arthur looked, golden and proud — the sun must have taken inspiration from him because Merlin doesn’t think that any living thing could ever be so bright. 

Gwen had looked perfect, a benevolent queen. His joy had almost been more than his pain. Almost. But pain was something he was good at. Joy wasn’t. 

He nods at Noor-jahan, unable to form words. She takes his nod as what it is: a plea, perhaps, for what, he doesn’t quite know.

“If or whenever he comes back, he will have to fight again, in a battle that, maybe, won’t be his to fight. But he will fight. It won’t be easy for him. He’s fought battles his whole life. Do you wish that for him? for yourself?” 

For a second, he lets himself imagine fighting alongside Arthur again, standing next to him, watching the beauty of his concentration, the movement of his muscles — fluid as water. But with every glory Arthur carried, there were so many moments of agony — of doubt, anger, immeasurable pain that looked so so so foreign on Arthur’s face, that made Merlin want to grab his strong shoulders and scream  _ let me take it away, your pain, your misery, let me take it all away, let me bear it, please, please, please. I would do anything for you. I already have. Please. Let me bear it.  _ He never said any of it. 

The yes to Noor-jahan’s question dies on his tongue and he doesn’t quite know what he feels, what he wishes now.

He doesn’t know when he starts crying, just silently, simply, as if there is nothing else he can do. 

“Oh, Merlin,” she puts her arm around his shoulder in the middle of the bar, coming close to him. She’s so incredibly warm, like his mother, “It’s okay, love. It’s alright. Of course you want him back. I’m sorry. My mouth gets away from me sometimes. Had I been in your shoes, I would have wished for the same. I still do. I wish for so many things. I wish for my magic to be back. I was told that the magic might even come back if it is really required — or something close to it. Oh, Merlin. It’s alright. You’re alright.”

He lets her hands, rough unlike the rest of her, run through his hair, soothing, soothing, soothing.  _ Workers’ hands, _ he thinks distantly, like his own. He marvels it at all for a moment, that after all the years spent alone, craving for someone who understands, he finds this person in a nondescript bar, this person who he feels like he knows, because she is holding him like  _ she knows,  _ like she knows all the things Merlin still can’t say out loud, doesn’t want to say out loud to anyone but Arthur. He accepts her comfort, because he is terrified that he won’t get to have this again. 

“I’m sorry.” He manages, somehow, his voice grating his throat.

“No.” She says, looking right at him. He doesn’t think he will ever get used to the sheer intensity of her gaze, “You deserve whatever good, whatever reprieve you can get. I do not know why I am still alive, Merlin but if this world needs me, it’ll have me. So will you. If you do, that is, need me. I am here. So are you, for however long we have to. I wish for your Arthur to come back to you, with all my heart.”

“He’s not my Arthur.”

She smiles at that, in a way that makes him feel like she knows something he doesn’t. It is a new sensation, to not have to hold all of the secrets. He thinks, if she wants to carry the secrets, he doesn’t quite mind so much. 

“Merlin,” she begins again, “I know you love him, you are devoted to him but he is not your life. You exist beyond him, without him. If you never see him again, you will still live. You are still living. Don’t be Arthur’s ghost. If you do see him again, it will be wonderful but you have to prepare for what happens if you never see him again. You’re not alone.”

He doesn’t quite know how she understands the extent of his love, his devotion to Arthur. But he knows,  _ knows  _ she is right. 

The bartender says that their time is up and they head outside. Noor-jahan gives him her address, it is not that far from his own, small flat. He gives her his phone number. He doesn’t need to say that he wishes she would keep in touch because he knows she will. It is a gift, to find someone who existed at the same time as him, he knows they won’t forget each other. She kisses his cheek and brushes the snow off of his coat before she heads her way. Merlin presses his hand to his cheek, feels that area warm up in contrast to the cold of everything around him and thinks  _ I will be alright. Soon. Someday. _

_ ___ _

  
  


He wakes up feeling less broken than he had in a very long time. It is still snowing, very lightly outside his window. 

It is the 31st of December. He will go to the Avalon Lake as he has done so every year. Even if Arthur never comes back, he doesn’t think he could stop going. 

He still feels like he might be in a dream, but he doesn’t think he could be so lucky even in a dream. But the thing is that when he woke up and got dressed, something seems to have died inside him, leaving behind a feeling of hesitant newness, a second life, a return home. 

___

  
  


Conor Oberst sings  _ This is the first day of my life  _ in his ear and he laughs silently at how long it took for him to feel something akin to a person again, how long it took for him to make missing Arthur just a part of him, a relentless stubborn part of him but still not the entirety of himself. He knows there will be days when the thought of  _ Arthur, Arthur, Arthur,  _ will consume his body like moss left to grow on the side of a decrepit wall. He is both, he thinks — the moss and the wall. 

But he is also  _ him,  _ also Merlin. He thinks, he might just go to therapy. He likes the idea of it, very much. Has heard about it, on the news, read about it in books. He thinks he might be able to go through with it. 

___

He stands opposite the lake, breathes in the air that smells like earth, like the beginning of something that never quite had an end. 

“Finally,” says a voice, from somewhere behind him, a voice he dreams of everyday, a voice that is he could never forget even if he forgets his own name, a voice that is, for a lack of a better word, simply, his salvation. “You’re a little late though, aren’t you? As always. Time can’t change you, Merlin. I’ve been walking around here looking for you like a lost dog! My clothes weren’t even warm. The wonderful ladies I met gave me this jacket, I suppose it is. But, where have you been? Were you busy collecting herbs again?”

It takes him a while but he turns around, his heart beating desperately, loudly, in his ribcage to the drum beat of a song whose words were always, only  _ Arthur, Arthur, Arthur.  _

He closes his eyes, wills away his tears, prays to any and every force that would listen that this is not a dream. If it were, he thinks he would go and lay down to rest in the lake, because he can’t go back from this. 

When he opens his eyes, Arthur is still there. Standing in front of him. His face that lovely mix of exasperation and undeniable fondness Merlin has missed so very much. He does not know if he believes in destiny or fate, but this — this feels so much like forgiveness. 

He does not know when he flings himself at Arthur, holding on for a dear life he can’t bear to lose  _ now.  _ He does not know when Arthur starts whispering  _ it’s alright _ , into his hair. He only knows how Arthur’s arms feel around him: a welcoming, a caging inside something beautiful. 

____

He takes him home. He still doesn’t think he believes it. He keeps staring at Arthur, afraid to touch after the brief spectacle at the Lake. He can’t quite shake the feeling that he’s being toyed with. That he can’t possibly be forgiven, be  _ redeemed,  _ just yet.

So he hovers, around his kitchen, around Arthur, hovers as Arthur showers and wears his clothes, hovers as Arthur comments on everything around the flat, hovers, hovers, hovers.

Until.

Until Arthur says  _ for gods’ sakes Merlin, you’re still an idiot,  _ and grabs his waist, the touch sending shockwaves of desire he didn’t know existed down and spine, and kisses him. 

Arthur kisses like he’s in battle: relentless and proud and so very sure of himself. He bites Merlin’s lip, holds him as close as he can, doesn’t give him a chance to breathe. Distantly, Merlin realises that it’s still snowing outside. He wishes he could kiss Arthur in the snow and he realises that he  _ can,  _ now. 

He runs his hands through Arthur’s hair, feels the finely spun threads of golden, as if the sun itself spun them, under his fingers.

Arthur pulls away but stays so so close that they breathe the same air. 

“It’s snowing again.” Arthur murmurs into his lips, “I’d like to kiss the snow off of you. If you’d let me.”

Merlin says  _ yes yes yes, yes to everything Arthur, yes.  _ Merlin says  _ yes,  _ every time. 

Arthur rests his forehead on top of Merlin’s, whispers, just for the two of them, not even for the the air, the snow around them, “I missed you. I missed you.”

“You were dead.” Merlin says, hands lingering on Arthur’s chest.

“Maybe. But I still missed you. And you’re still an idiot. Good to know that.” 

“You’re still a pompous prat. It took you so long, you fucking prat.” 

Arthur laughs — it sounds unused and slightly rough, as if it surprised Arthur himself to laugh like this. It’s Merlin’s most treasured sound.

“I suppose Albion needs me now.” 

“I won’t let you be alone, Arthur.”

“I know.” Arthur smiles, soft and secret. 

The snow falls and falls. Covers everything old, gives birth to new beginnings, new endings. It is a redemption.

Arthur kisses him again, and again and again. And Merlin lets himself be kissed, lets himself hope, hope,  _ hope.  _ It is a homecoming.

  


**Author's Note:**

> Title is from the wonderful song We are nowhere and it's now by the equally wonderful Bright Eyes.
> 
> Comments and kudos are appreciated. Thank you so much for reading!
> 
> come chat on tumblr if you'd like: [ tumblr ](https://theskyisgay021.tumblr.com/)


End file.
